Notes provided by Helen Edwards, who has carried out extensive research on the women who signed Sheet 156, including mapping where they lived. Download pdf of this research here.
Mary Crawford, nee Walker [Mary Crawford, Roslyn] (No. 7)
Land designation: Allotment 1, Block 2, Township of Roslyn. Address: 2 Bruce Stree. Age in 1893: 54 years.
Mary Cameron was born in Scotland about 1842, and emigrated on the Jura in 1862, as a domestic servant. In 1864 she married a seaman, William Walker, in Dunedin. Captain Walker died in 1874 after a long illness. Mary Walker was a 40 year-old widow when she married widower James Crawford, a Renfrewshire stone mason, in 1880. She and her three children lived with James’ family by his first wife, Mary McNeill (who had sailed on the same Jura voyage as Mary Cameron), in the stone cottage James built about 1867, still standing today on the corner of Ross and Bruce Streets. Mary and James Crawford had a daughter and three sons, two of whom were killed in France during the First World War—Stanley Hutson Crawford in September 1916 and Lance- Corporal John Cameron Crawford in January 1917. Four of Mary’s children predeceased her—her son William Walker died in 1902 and daughter Isabella Walker (Mrs Kilgour) in 1913. James died in Bruce Street in 1918, aged 81, and Mary went to live with her youngest daughter, Mabel Allan Napier, in Hart Street, Roslyn. She travelled to Wellington with the Napiers in 1921 and died of a heart attack on July 20, 1922, aged 80. Her sudden death during the night was the subject of an inquest. She is buried in the Crawford family grave in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery.
Personal communication from Pauline McCowan, a descendant of Mary Crawford.